The cultivation of Lactarius with edible mushrooms

From the early 1800s science virtually ignored the cultivation of edible mycorrhizal mushrooms other than the true truffles. The drought was finally broken by Nicole Poitou when she cultivated Lactarius deliciosus and Suillus granulatus in the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique’s laboratories at Pont-de-la-Maye, France, in the mid-1970s. However, another 20 years were to pass before Yun Wang working at Invermay Agricultural Centre near Dunedin, New Zealand, was able to begin the routine cultivation of L. deliciosus. The purpose of this paper is to document the history of the cultivation of L. deliciosus in New Zealand since its introduction in the late 1990s, its spread back to Europe and its subsequent introduction into Yunnan, Tibet and Sichuan starting about 2014.